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What might pre-service music teachers learn by stepping outside the formal curriculum? In between semesters student teaching in New York City, I investigated music education practices in the Vezo fishing village of Andavadoaka, Madagascar. By investigating how this community practices advanced musicianship learned primarily outside the classroom, I aimed to understand what formal music educators can do to improve musicianship in our communities. This research focuses on the teaching and learning of music as observed through one community institution (the Catholic school) and three knowledgeable, local music makers (Gustin, Felicia, and Sylvera). Through ethnography and oral history, I asked, what is the relationship between community and music education practices in Andavadoaka? And, how do my observations as a cultural outsider provide insight into the relationship between community and music education practices in the formal, school settings where I was learning to teach? Three themes emerged from these experiences. By imbuing our classrooms with a participatory ethos, practicing music in a richer cultural context, and tapping into the social networks inhabited by our students, we can musically develop our communities far beyond their current limits.

This study analyses the impacts of the COVID-19 on teaching and learning at Fianarantsoa University (FU) in Madagascar. Interview questionnaires with 50 participants were carried out at the university concerned. Results demonstrate that FU took care of its students during the lockdown by introducing various measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 within the university. Distance learning via Gmail and Facebook, where teachers send course files to the mail group, was only found in certain parts of the colleges. Gmail was implemented to complete unfinished exams to avoid the White year. Controversial arguments were uncovered due to the complete cessation of teaching at the end of the distance exams without introducing alternatives to continue academic activities, though there are still three unfinished academic years. This study recommends the regular use of 'Facebook' as a device to shift to online teaching and learning, mainly if incidents occur that lead to academic disruption, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, national epidemic, natural catastrophe or others. Facebook is the most used platform in Madagascar, with 3.05 million users in early 2022.

In studies on educational leadership across African countries, researchers are using different concepts that do not have the same meanings or similar histories, including variations in involvement by local, national, and international leaders. In the first part of this article, we problematize conceptualizing globally minded school leadership in Africa and attempt to understand the way local and global actors apply these concepts to and from within African contexts. In the second part, we present research working at the intersection of the NGO-Postcolonial border working with educational leaders in Madagascar. The findings show that early childhood education makes a difference on school readiness and that quality matters. In the third part, we propose a multilateral model for decolonising educational leadership in Africa by working on the past-present continuum and holding the tension between "border-specific" and "cross-border" perspectives.

The COVID-19 outbreak stimulated an outbreak of online learning in many institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Educational institutions went beyond fighting the COVID-19 through social distancing norms to tackling Sustainable Development Goal Four (SDG 4) with the adoption of online learning as the new modality for instruction. Online learning has the propensity to ensure learners from all geographical regions have access to education, thereby addressing the inequalities in education. However, the disparities in the access to digital infrastructure had a negative impact on the online instruction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The online learning experience is best described as a "challenge-ridden online learning" with many teachers suffering from burnout and students lamenting on limited ICT resources, inadequate access to affordable and reliable internet, power outages, and anxiety over academic outcomes. Despite the challenges, the COVID-19 has presented a silver lining to online learning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Aside the attempt to massify online learning, many institutions have come up with novel technological innovations and inventions to bridge the digital divide in the region. The review gives an overview of the challenges, prospects, and practical implications of online learning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Abstract-The COVID-19 outbreak stimulated an outbreak of online learning in many institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Educational institutions went beyond fighting the COVID-19 through social distancing norms to tackling Sustainable Development Goal Four (SDG 4) with the adoption of online learning as the new modality for instruction. Online learning has the propensity to ensure learners from all geographical regions have access to education, thereby addressing the inequalities in education. However, the disparities in the access to digital infrastructure had a negative impact on the online instruction in Sub-Saharan Africa. The online learning learning" with many teachers suffering from burnout and students lamenting on limited ICT resources, inadequate access to affordable and reliable internet, power outages, and anxiety over academic outcomes. Despite the challenges, the COVID-19 has presented a silver lining to online learning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Aside the attempt to massify online learning, many institutions have come up with novel technological innovations and inventions to bridge the digital divide in the region. The review gives an overview of the challenges, prospects, and practical implications of online learning in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Calls for a common environmental education (EE) vision imply imposing certain values as universal. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge on the extent to which EE reflects universalities versus diverse sociocultural realities. We explored practitioners' perspectives on the purpose of EE by interviewing practitioners in Finland and Madagascar using a theory of change approach. We classified EE goals into eight categories following the framework of Clark et al. (2020). We found signs of universal patterns, with commonalities such as the importance of the cognitive domain and de-emphasis of sociocultural aspects. Yet, differences arise: the connection to nature was central in Finland, whereas economic and bridging strategies were more common in Madagascar. Our results reflect the tradition of EE in post-industrial countries and suggest the influence of the colonial legacy and Western epistemologies in Madagascar. Questions remain about the extent to which those differences are culturally grounded.

Purpose: To investigate the emergence and specificities of local-led innovation platforms (IPs) in Madagascar and contrast them with neighbouring research-led IPs. Design/methodology/approach: We developed a multi-disciplinary framework combining insights from the literature on IP, innovation support services, and innovative networks. Using an exploratory multiple case study approach, we used this framework to analyse eight IPs in Madagascar. Findings: (1) local-led IPs are problem oriented; (2) there is a gap between the stated objectives of the IPs and their activities; and (3) their significant shortcomings result from weak or lacking inter-organisational management practices. Practical Implications: We propose concrete avenues for strengthening local-led IPs by building their capacity to innovate at the individual, organisational and network levels. Theoretical Implications: We contribute to refining IP assessment methods with an operational framework based on a small subset of variables, focusing on activities, shortcomings, and inter-organisational management practices. We also call for further research into innovation network capacities. Originality/Value: Our study sheds light on less documented local-led IPs. From a critical point of view, it shows that, despite the interest they attract among donors, local-led IPs suffer from specific weaknesses and require substantial support, especially when they operate in weak enabling environments.

In this article, teachers Niry Razafimamonjy and Josiana Andriantsalama, at the Lycee Jacques Rabemananjara beside the Indian Ocean in Taomasina, discuss how they support their students' learning and contribute to the field of English language teaching in Madagascar.

In Madagascar, secondary and adult English as a foreign language (EFL) classes commonly have limited resources and inadequate teacher preparation. Schools often have few or no textbooks and dictionaries. Computers with Internet access are a rare luxury. Teachers themselves may be underprepared, with no English teaching credential, minimal training, and limited English proficiency. Compounding these challenges, both teachers and students might not have any opportunities to engage with English outside the classroom and may have multiple primary and instructional languages--Malagasy and French, in the case of Madagascar. This was the situation for one of the authors, Sahondranirina, as a high school English teacher in Madagascar. Her students could not afford to buy a dictionary. Even if Sahondranirina had managed to convince the school principal to buy some French-English dictionaries, they would not have been much help because her students were not fluent in French--their first language is Malagasy. She therefore decided to help herself, her fellow English teachers, and her students by developing a bilingual Malagasy-English vocabulary workbook based on themes from the Madagascar national English secondary-school curricula. To help teachers facing similar challenges, this article explains the rationale and strategies to create useful vocabulary workbooks for multilingual students.

This paper examines three interrelated factors outside of formal provision of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in sub-Saharan Africa that have undermined TVET systems. The first is the process, pace, and levels of industrialisation, which has had a direct effect on TVET provision: low numbers of well-paying jobs requiring technical expertise. This has an indirect effect, which is the second crucial factor: lack of economic development and change in labour markets. There are very few jobs that would be considered 'middle class' or 'mid-level' in wealthy countries. Most people are in survivalist work. An international consensus since the 2000s on palliative approaches to development which address the effects but not the causes of the lack of economic development in Africa has resulted in mass poor quality provision of education--the third factor. Education systems are rapidly expanding and achievement levels rising, in the context of very little possibility of labour market rewards for most people, and substantial labour market rewards confined mainly to graduates. This reinforces deeply embedded cultural preferences for general education, which originate in the type of education systems established by colonial powers, as well as the relationships between educational credentials and elite jobs.

Sub-Saharan Africa secondary school science curricula recognise language as the most important communication tool for learners' biology learning outcomes. Despite this prominent goal, learners' scientific literacy at secondary school appears to be insufficient to cope with classroom teaching and learning of biology. This paper presents a review of literature regarding the way English as the language of instruction and inquiry-based learning strategies affect biology learning in Sub-Saharan Africa secondary schools. The scope of the review included journal articles, books and book chapters published in the period from 2005 to 2020 on the English language of instruction in biology education in Sub-Saharan Africa. We established criteria for first article searches indexed in Scopus, African Journals Online, the Education Resources Information Center, Web of Science and Psych Info as recognised index systems for science education. We considered studies related to the understanding of learners' language backgrounds, language-in-education policy and pedagogical language strategies (practice) that mediate learning. In this case, 53 studies were identified after removing redundancies; 27 studies satisfied the inclusion criteria when screened by key words and abstract and reviewed for eligibility; and only nine were selected after evaluating the full texts. The review analysis suggests that there is a gap in the corpus of literature on what and how pedagogical language strategies should be utilised to support meaningful learning of biology in multilingual settings. Poor learners' academic achievement and conceptual engagement in biology at secondary school level were the main effects reported by the reviewed literature. Less is still known about the effect of the use of inquiry-based learning strategies on learners' conceptual engagement in multilingual biology classrooms. We recommend formulating a clear policy articulation on the use of bilingual instructions in teaching and learning of biology at the secondary school level; assessing teacher and learner performance over pedagogical language strategies; and evaluating the contribution of IBL strategies in addressing language barriers in biology learning for higher order thinking skills in Sub-Saharan Africa secondary schools.

This article provides a comparative analysis of Christian faith-based schooling in five African countries, including data on the proportions of faith-based schools, financing models, and forms of organization vis-à-vis the state. The case studies represent different forms and models. In all of the countries, at least one in six schools is run by a church. Christian churches do not see themselves as 'private schools' but as public providers working for the public common good. Faith-based schools contribute not only to making sure that children go to school and learn while in school, but also to sharing ideals ranging from social justice and equity, to peace and democracy, and social participation and inclusion. The article concludes with some reflections on future challenges for faith-based schools, mainly related to their funding and the lack of data to assess challenges and opportunities.

In this paper, we measure the contribution of an additional year of schooling on skills acquisition for a cohort of young adults in Madagascar. We estimate a value-added model of learning achievement that includes test scores measured at adolescence, thereby reducing the potential for omitted variable bias. We demonstrate that schooling increases cognitive skills among young adults. The value-added of a year of schooling during adolescence is 0.15 to 0.26 standard deviation. Our results show the skills gap widens in adolescence, as students with higher cognitive skills complete more grades, accumulating more skills in their transition to adulthood.

The paper argues that in many developing countries there is a set of linked symptoms in education systems that cohere into what we call a weak foundations syndrome. Multi-source evidence is presented to illustrate how weak foundations through the early years of schooling lead to low primary school completion. Symptoms of the syndrome include (1) low access, use, and quality in preprimary programs; (2) permanently high "apparent" rate of intake (above 100%) into grade 1; (3) over-enrollment bulge, in the early grades, as well as formal and informal grade repetition through primary school; (4) "apparent" large enrollment drop-off between grades 1 and 2. Small stories for Burundi, Madagascar, and Ethiopia are presented to illustrate the syndrome. These cases also identify how countries and international organizations are starting to address the issues. An interesting aspect of the findings is the data that show parents' support for preprimary education by enrolling their children earlier than the normative age for grade 1.

Evidence on girls' transitions through puberty in Madagascar and ways in which menarche influences their educational experiences and future sexual and reproductive health is limited. We conducted qualitative research involving participatory activities with girls in rural and urban Madagascar to explore their transitions through early puberty. Key informant interviews were also conducted with adults interacting in girls' lives. Findings revealed gaps in girls' knowledge and support during puberty, varying guidance received about sexuality after menarche, and challenges managing menstruation in school. Given significant gaps in girls' levels of knowledge and support, a clear need was demonstrated for educational material on puberty for early adolescents, along with teacher training about puberty. Improved toilet facilities are also needed to improve menstruating girls' school-going experiences.

Project-based learning (PBL) in the science classroom provides an opportunity for students to investigate socioscientific issues that are current, authentic, and relevant. In a typical PBL unit, the teacher designs a narrative plan and acts as a facilitator who helps gather and organize student ideas. The framework of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) states that science content be covered deeply and position students in authentic roles as scientists whenever possible (NGSS Lead States 2013). In high school, the NGSS engineering performance expectations require students to solve problems that are global in nature, while considering potential constraints that connect to culture and the environment. The biology PBL unit described here was developed by two science educators during a professional development experience in Madagascar with the Global Exploration for Educators Organization (GEEO). During travel across the island nation of Madagascar photos, videos, artifacts, and recorded personal stories were collected that assisted these educators in the construction of this unit.

Various indicators suggest that math and science students in many developing countries are lagging behind their counterparts in other nations. Using Madagascar as a case study, we aimed to: (1) evaluate the effectiveness of education among those enrolled in science and math programs at primary, secondary, and university institutions; and, (2) understand barriers to student progression through the education system. To that end we conducted 63 semi-structured interviews in June and August 2012 with science and math teachers in five population centers, across all three levels of both public and private school systems. We found that crowded classes, limited resources (pedagogical and infrastructural), an average student range in age of seven years per classroom (suggestive of grade repetition and/or late school starting age), and discontinuities in the language of instruction explain why teachers estimated that almost 25 percent of their students would not finish school. Although most secondary and university teachers taught the sciences only in French, they estimated that just one-third of students could fully understand the language. There were also urban-rural and publicprivate disparities. Teachers in urban areas were significantly more likely to teach using French than their rural counterparts, while public schools also housed significantly larger classes than private institutions. While resource equalization will help to resolve many of these disparities, improved early training in French and increased local autonomy in designing appropriate curricula will be necessary to tackle other shortfalls.

This study investigates the impact of higher education on economic growth and is based on a sample of 18 African economies over the time period 1980-2015. The research makes use of a Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) framework to account for potential dynamic and endogenous relationship in modelling of the tertiary education-growth nexus. The findings show that higher education significantly increases the economic growth of the sample of African countries understudy with a lagged time. The economic effect of higher education is observed to be relatively smaller as those reported for the case of developed countries and also in comparison with primary and secondary education. Interestingly, this research also confirms the presence of a reverse causation as the economy's income is also a determinant of tertiary education, although with a lagged time. Domestic and foreign direct investment, education attainment as well as openness level are also observed to be other determinants of tertiary education enrollment. Finally, there is evidence that tertiary education encourages private and foreign direct investment thus indirectly affecting growth rates.

This study investigates how an interviewer's characteristics affect how respondents answer survey questions about democracy and political engagement. I analyze data from the 2008 Afrobarometer surveys, in which 810 interviewers surveyed 27,713 respondents across 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Using these data, I study how interviewer education, age, and gender affect two outcomes: (1) response distributions to attitudinal and behavioral survey questions and (2) the likelihood of respondents saying 'don't know' to a survey question. The analysis also investigates how the respondent's perception of who sponsored the survey (NGO, private sector, government) affects attitudes. The results show that these interviewer characteristics affect the quality of survey data on political attitudes and behaviors. In the discussion, I consider the implications for research based on public opinion data about democracy and political engagement.

Information and communication technology (ICT) use among children in low-income countries remains understudied. The purpose of this study is to describe laptop usage among children in the context of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project 4 years after the laptops were first introduced in a community in Madagascar. The study was conducted using a mixed-method approach combining analysis of ICT use history, empirical observations, and interviews with children and parents. In class, activities involving laptops--including educational games, information research, and the creation of texts and storyboards--were found to be aligned with existing classroom activities. Outside school, computers were found to be used in individual, group, or family settings to listen to music and watch videos, play games, share content, and do homework. The study also found that computers play a major role in everyday routines, opening up new possibilities in photography and video-making. The findings also indicate that computer usage encourages children to learn new literacies in which image plays a central role and new forms of self-expression if they are accompanied and supported by their family.

Education was an instrument in Christian missions' and colonial powers' civilisation projects. At the same time, education was also instrumental in fostering opposition. This article approaches perceptions of education mainly from the perspective of Norwegian Lutheran missionaries in French colonial Madagascar during the 1940s. The focus is on how the mission, after several years under a secular French colonial government, related to the change in educational policy that came with the rise and fall of the anti-republican and pro-religious Vichy regime. When secularisation and assimilation policies were again implemented after the Second World War, Protestant missions struggled for influence. Madagascar experienced a bloody anti-foreign revolt in 1947 for which French administrators, among others, blamed education. Norwegian missionaries strongly opposed the revolt, but they were also in favour of leading education onto a Malagasy track. In this shifting colonial Malagasy context, mission education contributed to Christianisation, Frenchification and Malgachisation in the Malagasy society.

Assessing the retention of knowledge is the first step of environmental education programs. The low education level in rural areas is one factor influencing habitat loss in Madagascar. We tested whether environmental education lessons given to teachers from a municipality, Iaboakoho, in a priority area for lemur conservation were retained after one year. Questionnaires were given to teachers from Iaboakoho and from other three neighbouring municipalities (control groups). Teachers from Iaboakoho had higher scores than the others. Knowledge gained was retained and might be transferred to children. Increasing proenvironmental attitudes and behaviours is the next step to reduce environmental exploitation.

Drawing from data gathered in South Western Madagascar in 2011, the work explores the combination of poverty and traditional gender roles as a critical factor in determining unequal school access among young people from semi-nomadic fishing communities. It demonstrates that from the age of early puberty, most boys go fishing with their fathers and brothers whilst most girls from the same families work at home. In contrast to the school systems observed in many developing society contexts, which demonstrate female marginalisation, in South Western Madagascar both boys and girls are marginalised. Instruments of global policy designs, such as positive discrimination for girls, seem ill-suited to resolve the problem. Instead, the authors call for a more tailored and context-specific approach to address the particular challenges amongst semi-nomadic fishing communities in Madagascar.

This article proposes a conceptual framework for how education can promote adolescent girls' empowerment and, by mapping the field, highlights promising examples of empowering education programs. We conclude by identifying both research and programmatic opportunities for the future that will harness the expertise of a range of specialists from the interdisciplinary fields of gender studies and adolescent development in collaboration with experts from the fields of education, health, and labor.

Using information from a randomized experiment carried out over the course of two school years in Madagascar, this paper evaluates the impact of specific actions designed to streamline and tighten the work processes of public primary school directors. The results show that interventions at the school level, reinforced by interventions at the district and subdistrict levels, succeeded overall in changing school heads' behavior toward better management. However, the average impact hides important heterogeneity. The impact of the intervention was significantly larger among school heads who had a nonpermanent contract and among school principals who were responsible for a monograde school. Interventions limited to the district and subdistrict levels proved to be largely ineffective on average, and the estimates do not show detectable differences in impact across principal and school characteristics. The results also show that direct and intensive interventions were more effective than interventions targeting only the district and subdistrict administrators.

Far from following a linear process from its conception to its implementation, an educational design often involves discrepancies between what its promoters intended and what the participants actually do. In this paper, drawing from a sociocultural perspective to learning, we focus our attention precisely on some of the discrepancies observed during the implementation of a training program. We consider these discrepancies not as mistakes or misunderstandings, but rather as indicators of the communicative dimension of any intervention and as "windows" on the processes of change and on learning. The program we have studied here was set up in Madagascar and was sustained by a Swiss cooperation agency addressed to farmers in the field of forestry. In this research, we adopted an "actor-oriented perspective" in order to understand the promoters' and the beneficiaries' interpretation of the design and the way they developed innovative strategies to resolve the difficulties they faced. We chose some "critical incidents" from the data gathered through ethnographical research and show how the whole process of the conception and the implementation of the program was deeply affected by both the power dynamic embedded in the history of the relationship between the Swiss and the Malagasy groups and by their own cultural and institutional constraints. In conclusion, we discuss the significance of an actor-oriented perspective that contributes to a better understanding of the social and cultural dimensions of learning and allows us to relate the here and now micro-phenomena to the larger anthropological, social, and political scenery.

The Education Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education (UPE) states that "by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." The 2008 midterm Global Monitoring Report claims that "A country's distance from UPE appears most clearly in terms of the net enrollment ratio (NER), the share of children of official primary school age who are actually enrolled in primary schools." This assumes that the share of those enrolled accurately reflects the share who will eventually complete a full course of primary schooling. For many countries, this assumption does not hold. I examine "on-track" sub-Saharan African countries, comparing progress toward UPE as measured by (1) the NER and (2) the primary school completion rate (PSCR). These measures can produce dramatically different indications of the amount and nature of progress achieved over time. I discuss why these differences occur. Finally, I argue that the PSCR, in the context of the proximate determinants of educational attainment framework, provides an integrated, mathematically coherent perspective on progress toward UPE and useful feedback for policy makers.